Random Acts
by EastAnglia
Summary: Alex, Gene, a random act and its aftermath. WARNING: CONTAINS NON-CONSENSUAL THEMES!
1. Random Act

TITLE: "Random Acts"  
FANDOM: Ashes to Ashes  
GENRE: Angst/Drama  
PAIRING: Gene/Alex-ish  
SPOILERS: Set loosely in Series 2, after Episode 5.  
RATING: M for strong violence, adult themes, and language  
FEEDBACK: Positive feedback is always nice. However, given the nature of the fic, I ask that if you have criticisms or comments about the subject matter, please PM me.  
DISCLAIMER: Not mine.

****WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS STRONG NON-CONSENSUAL THEMES.****

**A/N:** For a variety of reasons, I really, really dislike non-con fics as a rule. However, this was something I wanted to write on a personal level to see if I could work past it and write the subject matter and its aftermath in a sensitive way. I don't know if I've succeeded, but I have tried. It's graphic, but I felt like it needed to be, and as far as the story goes, the violence itself isn't as much the focus as the aftermath is. This story isn't for everyone. It is truly not my intention to upset anyone, so if you're offended or disturbed by non-con fics, **PLEASE READ NO FURTHER!!**

xxXXxx

He'd been eyeing her all morning. She'd been filling out some interminable report for what seemed like hours, wishing with every stroke of her pen for online forms. Every time she raised her head from her papers, she could see him in his office, feet on desk, looking at her through narrowed eyes. He'd quickly look away then, as if he hadn't been looking at her at all, but when she lowered her head back to her desk, she could feel his gaze back on her.

When she finally headed into the break room, he followed on her heels so quickly, she knew it couldn't be coincidental. He mumbled something unintelligible to her as he entered and tried to look nonchalant rummaging through the cupboards for a tea bag.

She waited for him to speak, and finally, he broke the silence. "So. This Boris bloke."

"What about him?"

"I take it you gave him the old heave-ho the other night."

She sighed and sipped at her tea before speaking. "Something like that. Yes."

He was silent for a moment and turned, leaning with his hips against the counter, arms across his chest. He was wearing a new suit, she noticed. The jacket was cut perfectly through the shoulders, and the trousers broke just right against the top of his boots.

_God, he's handsome,_ she thought and then shook it loose from her head with a slight toss of her hair.

She watched his adam's apple bob up and down as he swallowed hard. He drummed his fingers against the counter, looked away, back at her again. "As I recall, DI Drake, you still owe me dinner."

Dinner. She blinked. He couldn't mean _that_ dinner, their aborted date before her parents had died. Surely not. It was months ago, and he hadn't showed her the slightest bit of interest since. They'd become friends, good friends, in the time since, but romantically, things seemed to have died on the vine. He'd paid more attention to that pregnant reporter who'd come through the month or so before.

"We _did_ have dinner, don't you remember? Pineapple rings. Sea scallops." She twinkled up at him. "_Rump._"

She expected him to toss back some smart comment, but he said nothing, and the corners of his mouth tugged down slightly. "I mean a proper dinner. Not at Luigi's. Someplace they don't let the riff raff in."

"Oh," she said, unable to speak. "All right."

"I thought that new place. What's it called? That poncey French place. _Chez Nous._"

Her jaw dropped. _Chez Nous_ had opened a month or so before and had got fabulous reviews. She knew the young chef would go on to have his own cooking programme on ITV in about fifteen years and a line of sauces on the shelves of every Tesco in Britain.

"Oh, _Gene_. Isn't that a little pricey? Are you sure you can afford it?" It was a stupid thing to say, and she immediately regretted it.

He looked away, and she could tell she'd insulted him. "Well, I'm not on the bloody dole!"

"No, I didn't mean…I just…" She sighed, gave up. "I think _Chez Nous_ would be lovely."

"Right. Well. Good. _Chez Nous_ it is. Eight o'clock. Tonight. Your place. I'll pick you up."

"Good."

"Good. RIght."

He turned to leave without ever bothering to make his tea.

"What, no comment?" she called after him, and he turned to her in the doorway of the break room. She smiled up into his face with a raised eyebrow. "You're not going to tell me to _'wear something slutty'_ this time?"

He held her gaze for a long time before speaking. His voice was low and silken. "No. I'm not."

And then he swept out, leaving her sitting there feeling swimmy-headed and slightly flushed.

xxXXxx

It was only when she looked back on her bed that she realised she'd changed her outfit five times. Six if you counted the thing with pleats she tried on twice before deciding it made her look like a vicar's wife at a lawn fete.

She finally picked the electric blue thing. It was soft, comfortable, and clingy in just the right places. _Yes_, she thought as she looked at herself in the full-length mirror. _Perfect_. And it was then she realised how much that mattered to her, how important this evening was.

She reckoned she'd always found him attractive, even the way Sam had described him, with that lived-in, rough handsomeness and gruff charm. But she'd been too focused on getting home to Molly in those first weeks to think of him in more than a passing way.

Besides, she hadn't thought him real then. He was a construct. A figment. You can't love a figment.

But now, months later, 1982 had begun to seem more real to her than her other life. The pull of it was too strong, and with it, the pull of Gene, who was alive and human and ridiculously, absurdly sexy.

There was more, though, and their relationship had deepened in the months she'd been here. She knew from the way he looked at her that he found her attractive, but he admired and respected her, as well, and not in that grudging way Ray had. They were friends, colleagues, but he saw and appreciated her as a woman, too. She wasn't sure she could have found that kind of relationship in 2008, let alone 1982.

If this was real, if this was to be the way she'd spend the rest of her days, then the thought of spending them with Gene had become very appealing.

She looked over at her bed to the stack of dresses and skirts. _Must put those away before I leave. Don't want Gene to come back to that._

She could feel herself blush, even here alone in her flat, that she was actually entertaining the thought of inviting him back here, to her _bedroom_.

_Not on the first date, Alex._

_And why not?_

She glanced down at her watch. He'd be here soon, and she was half-dressed. Earrings, shoes. Last coat of lipstick. She rummaged in her knicker drawer for a pair of black stockings and tried to pull them on one-handed while fishing through a tangle of necklaces for her favourite earrings with the other.

"Oh, _bugger_," she said under her breath. She had managed to pull the one leg on up to her knee before noticing the long, jagged ladder up the front. "Bugger bugger."

It was her last pair, and she quickly glanced down at her watch again. Ten minutes before eight. He'd be late, but just late enough to keep her waiting. She had fifteen, twenty minutes, maybe. Enough time to pop round the corner for a new pair. She grabbed her handbag and her cardi from the hook by the door and headed downstairs.

It was already dark this time of year. She stepped outside into the night air, ready to turn the corner toward the Boots on the other end of the street. She stopped when she saw the group of young men on the corner. Pushing, smoking, laughing. Skinheads. Fred Perry shirts, braces, cuffed jeans, Doc Martens. They were drunk, most likely, looking for trouble.

She turned her head toward the passageway that cut through to the next street over. It was dark, lined with rubbish bins and cardboard boxes from the shops that backed onto it, but she could make out the bright, familiar "BOOTS" sign at the other end. She turned back to the skinheads. They had seen her now. One of them was pointing at her, whistling, and another let out a low, menacing laugh. Best to avoid them. She could take a shortcut and be there and back in no time.

She pulled her cardi a little tighter around her and headed into the darkened alley. Most of the shops were closed this time of night, but there was a light from one of the restaurants bleeding out onto the alley. The back door opened, and familiar scents wafted past. A man shuffled out with a bag and dropped it into the rubbish bin. Mr. Singh, he was called. They had all stumbled in there drunkenly in the middle of the night more than once for a curry when even Luigi had refused to serve them. She smiled at him, and he nodded at her in recognition before shuffling back inside. The screen door thumped shut behind him, and she was alone again.

_Gene_, she said to herself and then repeated it out loud. "Gene." The sound of his name made her smile now, and she felt warm and giddy. _You have a date with Gene Hunt._

It was the last thing she remembered thinking before the moment that would always divide her life here into broken two parts.

There was a hand, coming from behind, grabbing her around the middle and pinning her arms to her side. Another hand clamped across her mouth, just as she let out a muffled scream. Her handbag flew out of her hand, and she could hear the loose change scattering and bouncing across the alley.

_Stay calm, Alex, stay calm._ Training…she'd been trained for this. _Remember this. Remember everything._

His thick hand was damp with sweat, and he clamped it tighter against her nose and mouth. Her lungs burned as she struggled for air.

She could feel his hot, sour breath against her ear as he leaned forward. "Do what I say, and you won't get hurt."

_The voice. The accent. Northern. Young. Remember it._

"Move," he said and pushed her along the alley toward a passage between two of the buildings. It was pitch black, a dead-end, no way out.

Her heart pounded. _Oh, God. No. Stay calm._ _Stay calm._

He stumbled in the darkness, and his grip around her waist loosened as he tried to regain his balance. She saw a chance then, a small opening. With a free hard, she tried to pry his arm from around her waist.

But he was too strong. He spun her around and landed two hard blows across her face. She could feel his sovereign ring cut into her lip, and her mouth filled with the bright, coppery taste of blood. Tears sprang to her eyes.

"Don't try that again. Do you hear me? _Do you hear me?_"

He loosened the grip on her mouth, and she gulped in chestful of air. "Yes, yes," she said in thin, wavering voice not her own. "Please…please don't do this."

He answered by slamming her head back onto the wall behind her once, then twice, hard, so stars danced in her field of vision, and she could feel her legs begin to give out from under her. She slid down the wall, and he pushed her the rest of the way down onto the hard ground.

She was aware of something cold and sharp against her throat then. A knife. He had a knife. "Oh, God..please, no don't," she said, the words sticking in her dry throat. There were his rough hands on her thighs. His thick hands with fat sausage fingers fumbling, pushing her dress up to her waist.

_Close your eyes…just close your eyes. It's only your body, it's not you._

She could smell him as he bore down on her, a thick, rancid odor of stale sweat. A wave of nausea swept through her as he forced her knees apart and pushed himself roughly inside her. There was a searing pain, she let out an involuntary cry and he clamped his free hand back over her face.

And then it was as if she were watching herself from a distance. Dimly aware of the music and the smells from the curry shop. The noise from the street, his foul breath coming in rough, uneven grunts against her wet cheek before he spilled into her with a senseless, guttural moan.

He was gone then. She could just see his feet at the end of the passage as she lay there. He had retrieved her bag from the ground, and she could hear things being tossed back down. Lipstick case, keys, the sound of her compact mirror shattering.

There was a satisfied grunt as he tucked her wallet in his back pocket. She could hear the sound of receding footfall, and then there was silence.

xxXXxx

_Half past sodding eight._

He was late, but not by _that_ much. Not so much that she should refuse to come out of her flat. He had knocked for five minutes before giving up and going down to Luigi's to try and ring her with no luck. Now he stood pacing on the pavement outside, wondering if he'd got the time and date wrong.

"Where is that bloody woman?" he said to no one in particular. There was a pack of skinheads he'd told to clear off twenty minutes ago, but now the street was dark and empty.

"Sod it," he muttered before heading back to the light and warmth inside. He'd have a beer and head home. He was stupid to think this would work, anyway.

"Mr. Hunt!" Luigi said as he came through the door with a scowl. "I thought you had an _assegnazione _with the lovely lady this evening."

Gene glowered at him as he hoisted himself onto a barstool. "Well, the _lovely lady_ is late."

"Women. Women are always late." He shook his head and let out a melodramatic sigh. "Perhaps you have found one who is worth the wait, Signore Hunt?"

Gene didn't answer but emptied half a glass of beer in one swallow. He could see Chris and Shaz in the corner. Their heads were pressed together, her fingers laced with his. She was laughing at something he said, and he leaned in to kiss her. Ray was across the bar from him, having not a small amount of success trying to pull some blonde tart from Lowestoft.

He drained the rest of his glass and slid it across the bar for a refill.

"Another, Signore Hunt?"

Gene waited a moment before putting his palm across the top of his empty glass. "No. Thanks, Luigi." His voice was soft and slightly wounded.

_She'll be here._

The door opened, and a gust of chill air swept in. Gene turned expectantly toward the door, thinking, _hoping_ it was Alex, but it was just a dark man wearing a kitchen apron underneath his jacket. There was something familiar about him, and Gene frowned trying to place the face.

Singh. It was Singh, the bloke from the curry place round the corner. The man frowned back at Gene and took a halting step inside. He was holding something in each hand. In his right hand was a torch, Gene could see. In the other, something he couldn't quite make out. Small, brown.

He knew. With a policeman's instinct, he knew. Something was wrong.

"Hunt…it's Inspector Hunt, is it not?" the man said as he crossed the restaurant to where Gene was sitting.

"Who wants to know?"

The man licked his lips, unsure how to continue. "The lady detective. The one I have seen you with…"

"What about her?" Gene slid from the stool. His heart had already begun to drum.

"I saw her tonight. In the alley behind my shop. When I came back out a few minutes later, she was gone, but I saw this."

Mr. Singh raised his left arm, and Gene recognised it in a terrible instant. Alex's handbag. Empty, torn strap.

Gene's face drained. "_Where'd you get this_?"

The man's eyes widened at the force of Gene's voice. "I – I –"

"_Where did you find it!? Show me!" _he bellowed. Heads turned in his direction, but Gene was already headed outside, dragging Mr. Singh behind him.

"_Show me where you found this_." He had Singh by the sleeve of his jacket, and he charged into the street. A cab laid on the horn and slammed on brakes.

Chris, Ray, and Shaz had followed them out and trailed behind. "What's wrong, Guv? Ray asked, stubbing out his fag on the sidewalk.

"It's DI Drake. She could be hurt."

Mr. Singh led them into the alley behind the row of shops and pointed with a quivering finger to the spot where he'd retrieved the handbag. There was a handful of coins on the ground at his feet. Some distance away were her keys and a smashed tube of lipstick. "Here! It was here, Inspector Hunt! That is all I know!"

"_ALEX!"_ Gene leaned his head back and roared, but there was no response. He turned to the others. "Right. Ray. Go back up to her flat. Get the keys from Luigi. Break down the door if you have to. Shaz…take Mr. Singh's torch. She might…"

But he couldn't say anything more. He walked ahead of them into the dark, not wanting them to see the way his hands shook. He took a long, steadying breath in.

And then there was a sound, thin and strained. He stopped, tilted his head to make sure he had heard it. "ALEX!" But there was nothing. "Chris!" He strode down the alley. "Go back to Luigi's. You'll need to call for forensics…"

"Guv…"

"Then take our friend here back and get a…"

"_Guv!_"

"_What is it, Shaz?"_ he barked and turned to her, hands on hips. She was shining the torch into the dark, narrow passage running between two of the buildings that backed onto the alley.

There was a movement, and in the dim light, he could just make it out. Alex sat there, back against the wall, knees pulled tight to chest, staring at a space on the opposite wall. A shaft of light from Shaz's torch fell across her face, and she slowly turned toward them, one eye swollen shut.

"Jesus Christ…" he said, his lungs deflating in sudden fear. He stumbled down the passage towards her.

She looked at them unseeingly for a moment before she cried out, and her body began to pitch with uncontrollable sobs.

END CHAPTER ONE

**A/N**: The worst part for Alex is over, I promise. The next few chapters will be dark, but the ending for Alex and Gene will ultimately be positive and hopeful.


	2. Before and After

**A/N: **Thanks to those who read and reviewed. I know it was a difficult read at times, but I appreciate you reading. Things are still going to be dark and angsty for the next couple of chapters, but I felt like they probably had to be. There is light at the end of the tunnel for Alex and for Gene. I promise.

xxXXxx

**CHAPTER TWO**

He crouched down on the ground next to her and tried to pull her into his arms, but she reached out and slapped at him blindly. She couldn't bear it, him touching her, seeing her this way. Him _knowing_.

But he managed to slip an arm around her shoulder, and she went limp against his chest with heavy sobs. "You're all right, Alex, you're all right," he repeated over again.

When her tears eased, and she could speak again, he sank back on his heels. "What happened?"

"He came up from behind," she said in a small, broken voice.

He looked away for a moment and then leaned in closer so the others wouldn't hear. "Did he _hurt_ you?"

_Hurt. _It was a stand-in for the word he couldn't say, not to her.

There was a beat before she spoke.

She was a police officer. She knew she had a duty to women, to the public. She knew this was a crime of power, and she had done nothing to bring it on herself. She knew that all rationally and logically, and she wanted to tell them all about the terrible thing that had happened to her there in that filthy alley. But when she opened her mouth, other words followed.

"No," she said so softly that he had to lean into hear, "he didn't hurt me."

She watched as Gene crumpled with relief, and the lie had come out so easily, she thought if she repeated it often enough, she would start to believe it herself.

A man came out of nowhere, she told them. He had tried to snatch her handbag, and when she refused to let go, he had hit her. But she was fine now, really. Shaken, dazed maybe, but she was _fine. _All she needed was to go home for a long, hot shower.

But Gene had insisted they go to A&E anyway, and she knew he was right. She'd need stitches over that eye, possibly her lip as well.

So she sat now in the hard, orange moulded-plastic chairs of the nearby A&E, holding one of Mr Singh's kitchen towels up to her lip. Her dress was stained with a dark spray of her own blood, and at some point, the heel of one shoe had snapped off.

Over in the corner, Gene, Chris, and Ray were talking in low, animated voices, all business. He was in his element, snapping orders to Chris and Ray. Talking about prints and suspects and blags.

She moved gingerly in the chair, trying find a comfortable position. Everything ached. Her head throbbed, and she thought she might have cracked a rib when he pushed her to the ground.

Her body would heal.

Shaz crossed to her with a cup of water and a straw. "Here, ma'am," she said gently, "Thought this might be easier for you to drink."

Alex muttered a thanks, and Shaz sat down next to her. "Do you have a mirror, Shaz?" she croaked.

Shaz frowned, waited a moment. "Are you sure, ma'am?" Alex nodded slowly, and Shaz fished through her bag for a small compact. She opened it up and passed it to Alex, her brows drawn down in concern.

Alex made a small, choked noise of surprise when she saw herself there. Caked blood and dirt streaked her swollen face. Her lip was now twice its normal size, and her left eye was a puffy, purple mass.

She shut the compact quickly and passed it back to Shaz. "It's not so bad, ma'am," Shaz said unconvincingly. "Really."

Alex only nodded and bit at the inside of her cheek to stop from crying. The tears stung her damaged eye.

There was a little boy in a Superman cape sitting across from her with his arm in a makeshift sling. He was staring at her, unblinking and open-mouthed.

"Don't stare, Billy," his mum said in a harsh whisper. "It's not polite." The woman dropped her head back down to her magazine, but Alex caught her looking up at her once or twice in a combination of fascination and disgust.

She knew. They all knew. Alex wasn't fooling anyone. She might as well write it on her forehead.

Gene was there in front of her then, crouching down with his hands on his knees. "You all right, Bolls? How's the eye?"

"Hurts," she said softly.

He jumped to his feet and took long strides across the floor to where a young woman in uniform sat behind a desk. "Oi! Can I get some service? We've got a wounded police officer here."

The woman looked up at him impassively. "Did you take a number, sir?"

"What is this, the bloody butcher's shop? I want a doctor, not a Sunday joint!"

People turned to stare. Alex lowered her head and pressed her hands against her ears. _Stop it, Gene, stop it stop it, _she wanted to scream and sink into the floor.

Mercifully, another nurse came through the door then with a file in her hand and finally called her name.

Alex nodded, and Gene crossed back to her to help her to her feet. "Right, there's a brave girl. Won't hurt a bit."

She limped across the floor, with him supporting her by the elbows, and he let her go as she went through the doors into the examining area. The nurse with the file stepped aside to let Alex past. "Mr. Drake, would you like to accompany your wife into the examination area?"

There was an awkward pause. "She's not…I'm not…"

"It's all right," Alex said to the nurse. "I'll go alone."

The nurse showed her to an empty examination table and yanked the curtain shut around her with brisk indifference. She sat that way for what seemed like another hour before a middle-aged doctor came in with young medical student in a white coat. The older man gave a perfunctory introduction and asked would she mind if Mr Smith observed the examination. It was part of his training.

Mr Smith was young and handsome, and he smiled at her warmly. She was dirty, fouled, crushed. How could anyone look at her that way?

_Yes, yes I do mind_, she wanted to say, but the doctor went on in his weary, detached, doctorly way.

"So, what happened here?"

She took a deep breath in. "I was mugged," she said in as clear and loud a voice as she could manage. She waited for some kind of response, for the men to share a look of knowing disbelief, but the doctor only smiled blandly back at her.

"Well, then. Let's see if we can get you sorted." He patted her knee. "We'll have you out of here in no time."

They poked and prodded at her face, and it was all she could do not to scream with their hands on her. They droned on. No fractures, but she'd need sutures over her left eye. She was lucky. Could have been worse.

They cleaned her wounds and draped her and the doctor asked without waiting for an answer if young Mr Smith could practice suturing on her. She only wanted this to be over. She felt closed in by the stark, sterile walls. She couldn't breathe.

Mr Smith was making the last stitches over her eye when she became aware of the noise at the end of the corridor, the sound of the doors from the waiting room being pushed upon and hitting the wall behind them.

"Alex!" It was Gene's voice, followed by the nurse's.

"Mr _Drake_! What are you _doing_? May I help you with something?"

"I told you I'm not…oh, sod it," he said with frustration. "Where's the missus?"

She could hear the footfall of squeaky nurses shoes against the tile floor, and the nurse pushed the curtain aside.

"Are you decent, Bolls?" Gene asked from just outside.

"Almost finished, Mr Drake," the doctor said as the medical student made a last stitch and cut the thread.

She wanted to tell him to go, but she was too numb to protest. He took a hesitant step inside the curtain. "Thought maybe I could talk the doctor into sewing a button on your lip while he's at it," he said with gentle, teasing affection. It was the first thing that had made her want to smile, but it hurt too much.

It was done, and the doctor stood there with his clipboard and read dryly through her discharge instructions. Something about getting the stitches out at some point, but she couldn't focus on his words. He would give her some pain medication, some antibiotics and something to help her sleep that night, if she wanted, but first a few questions to make sure he got the dosage right and there were no contraindications.

_Height weight was she allergic to penicillin how many alcoholic beverages did she consume a week. _He rattled them all off in his monotone, ticking the boxes at her answers. _Yes no no yes five sometimes._

"Is there any possibility that you might be pregnant?" It was just one of the questions, and he stood there, head down, with his pen poised above the paper.

She couldn't answer. Her mind swept backwards, counting the days. She couldn't think. There was a silence.

The doctor looked up at her over his half-glasses. She felt her chin begin to quiver. From the corner of her vision, she could see Gene lifting his head to her slowly. It was as if a sudden chill had overtaken her, and her body began to tremble.

"Mrs Drake?" the doctor asked in alarm, waiting for an answer.

No. The timing was wrong. She wasn't pregnant.

But she couldn't be sure. Could she. Not now.

"I don't know," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She let out one, ragged sob, and her shoulders began to shake. She cupped her hand around her mouth in a gesture self-comfort.

The doctor lowered his clipboard and folded his hands in front of him. There was a silence. "Shall I order a pelvic exam?" he asked her in quiet understanding.

She nodded, unable to look at him. He picked up his clipboard and began to scribble orders. She would need a tetanus shot, he told her in a measured voice. She should see her GP for more tests. Pregnancy. Sexually transmitted diseases.

"Are there any questions?" he asked, and she shook her head slowly once. "I'm very sorry," he said, and slipped away.

She turned to Gene then, and he looked at her in awful comprehension. His face was grim and drained of colour.

Oh, God, he knew. He _knew_, and it was almost too awful to bear.

"Don't tell the others. Please, Gene. Please don't," her voice rose with panic.

"Alex…"

"_Please_, Gene. Promise me."

He didn't answer. His jaw tightened, and he looked away. "I should…go, Bolly. I'll meet you in the waiting room. I'm…" But his voice trailed off, and he backed away before he could finish.

She wanted to call out after him, but there was a sudden rush of activity. The nurse came in to help her change into one of those awful gowns. The doctor followed, and they talked to her in that low, pitying tone that was somehow worse than indifference. She hated this. It was humiliating under the best of circumstances, this feeling of exposure, lying here in these cold stirrups. Now, it felt like another violation.

She lay there, the taste of blood and bile in the back of her throat, counting the holes in the ceiling tile and trying to focus on the dying fluorescent light that flickered overhead.

After it was over, she changed back into the bloodied dress, and the nurse handed her some pills in a little paper cup. She looked at her in sympathy, but Alex knew what she was really thinking.

_Thank God it isn't me._

She stumbled out towards the waiting room, exhausted and already numb from the medication. She felt nothing now, and she wanted to slip into the black void. But then there he was, and the sight of him hit her with a physical force. She alternated between wanting nothing more than to have him wrap his arms around her and tell her it would be all right and never wanting another person to touch her again.

He had sent the others home, and now he sat there alone, elbows on his knees, looking off into the middle distance. He jumped up when he saw her.

"I, uh, brought the car round front. Since you lost your shoes and all," he said with a false brightness. She nodded silently, and his face fell. He looked at the floor for a moment before he lifted his eyes back to hers again. "Why didn't you tell me, Bolls?"

_Because of the way you're looking at me right now,_ she wanted to say.

"I don't know."

He nodded, she could just see a flicker of pain on his face, and then he was DCI Hunt again. "I had Ray go back to the scene and talk to forensics. Chris is getting a statement from Mr Singh."

"I don't want to talk about it. Not now." Her voice had already begun to slur from the sedative. "Please just take me home."

Neither spoke on the way back to her flat, and she sat with her forehead pressed against the cool glass of the passenger side window. Finally, the Quattro pulled up in front of Luigi's.

There was a silence. "We'll catch this bastard, Alex."

"No, we won't," she said in a tired, resigned voice. There was a brief burst of tears, and she covered her face for a moment until they subsided.

When she lifted her head, he was still gripping the steeling wheel with both hands.

"I should go," she said and jumped out of the car onto the pavement before he could speak.

She heard him call her name as she went into the building. She waited for a moment inside the door, but then she heard the sound of the Quattro pulling away from the kerb.

She climbed upstairs and pushed the door into her darkened flat. She stepped inside, closing and locking the door behind her in one swift motion and then running her fingers along the wall in a panic to find the lights.

She hurried across the floor, turning the lights on in the kitchen, too, and then into the bedroom and into the bathroom. She clawed at her ruined dress, pulling it over her head and stuffing it into the bin there before jumping into a hot shower, as hot as she could bear it, where she stood under the stream, scrubbing at her skin until it was raw.

After a long while she finally came out and dressed in her pyjamas. Her pills were lined up in little bottles on the sink. One said to take on an empty stomach. The other said to take with food. She snorted without humour and carried them into the kitchen, popping one of each into her mouth as she went. Her throat was raw from stress and tears, and she reached into the refrigerator to wash the pills down with a glass of milk.

As she pulled the lid off the bottle, its sour odor filled her mouth and nose. This was his smell, the smell of rancid milk.

Her stomach churned with revulsion, and she staggered back into the bathroom, where she gripped the toilet, choking and retching until her sides ached. She lost track of how long she sat there crouching on the bathroom floor in exhaustion.

Finally, she went back into her bedroom to see the pile of clothes lying there on the bed. The plans she had made. The hopes she had for this evening. He'd never want her now. Not like this. She wasn't sure she cared.

She pushed the clothes onto the floor with one sweep of her arm and crawled on top of the duvet, curling herself into a ball.

She lay there, too numb to think or cry or feel, until she finally fell asleep, each light in her flat still blazing.

xxXXxx

CID was dark and empty this time of night, and he sat there in his office smoking a chain of fags and hoping the whisky would numb him beyond feeling. It hadn't worked yet, but he poured himself another glass.

_You weren't there, Gene. You weren't there. _

The words kept repeating over and over in his head on an agonising loop.

_She needed you, and you weren't there. And now you can't help her._

He'd taken the Met's required sensitivity training course. He knew how to comfort a victim of sexual assault. He'd let countless women cry on his shoulder. Grannies and students and housewives. He knew the right things to say. He wasn't a complete heartless bastard.

But then he had seen her there, crying in the examination room, looking afraid and vulnerable, and he couldn't speak or move. She needed him, and he wasn't there.

He rose, hardly able to stand now, and moved unsteadily and restlessly around his office.

_Useless miserable bastard. _

He lifted his chair from the floor, and with an impotent, rageful howl he flung it against his office door. There was the sharp sound of shattering glass, and tiny shards flew across the room. He stood for a moment, watching the jagged hole in his office door before downing the rest of his whisky.

His feet crunched against the glass as he moved across the floor. He kicked the broken chair aside and stalked out of his office into the darkness.

END CHAPTER TWO

A/N: Just so you know, Alex isn't pregnant, and she won't contract an awful disease. I promise. That's not what this story is about.


	3. Fine

**A/N: **This chapter was tough to write. In some ways, Gene is like an open book, and in others he's completely inscrutable. He was the latter in this chapter. I tried to do some research into the ways men react in situations like this, but Gene is in a class by himself and doesn't always behave the way he's meant to. I think I've only been moderately successful here. It's dark, too. Very dark. Even for me. But it's grounded in reality, and I promise that things get lighter after this chapter and an upbeat ending is in sight!

xxXXxx

**CHAPTER THREE**

He had managed to dig a rolled-up, rumpled necktie from the bottom left hand drawer of his desk, but if anyone noticed he was still wearing the same suit he'd worn the night before, no one said anything. They were too busy whispering about the gaping hole in his office door that had been hastily covered with a section of cardboard box.

He hadn't quite made it home the night before. He'd sat brooding in his office until shattering the glass and stalking out into the night. The scum who did this to Alex was out there, and Gene had some alcohol-fueled notion that if he crossed paths with him, he would somehow know him on sight. He walked the streets until dawn, smoking, half-blind drunk, looking for a man he couldn't possibly recognise.

The alcohol had done nothing to numb him. He'd only spiraled further down into his state of misery, but he was sober again by the time it was light. On the way back to Fenchurch East thoughts of what he would do to the man when they finally met shot through his head.

_Not revenge. Justice. _

As he entered the building, he squared his shoulders, held his head up. He was the Gene Genie. A fresh tie, a Portuguese shower, hair of the dog, and no one would be the wiser.

He sat at his desk now, swirling the scotch in his glass, and staring down at his phone.

_You should ring her. Make sure she's all right_.

He could see her empty desk through the slats in the blinds. She hadn't come in that morning. Not that he'd expected her to.

_Ring her, you morose bastard._

He had picked up the phone three times that morning, even dialed half the numbers before hanging up. He picked the receiver up and held it with the dial tone droning in his ear.

_What the bloody hell do you say?_

He was still holding it that way 30 seconds later when the doors into CID parted. She came in and stood for a moment in the doorway before walking towards her desk. She was moving very slowly, as if the medication they'd given her the night before hadn't quite worn off. Heads turned to watch, but pretended they weren't.

"Heard you took on a mugger, ma'am," someone finally said.

"That's right." She set her things down, draped her jacket over the back of her chair.

"Well, we're thinking about having you represent CID in the Met's boxing tournament this year."

There was a ripple of laughter, and she forced her lips into a smile as she sat at her desk. He watched as she lined up a row of pencils just so, fidgeted with a stack of papers.

He wanted to go out and punch every last one of them, but instead he sat rooted at his desk. He'd watched her like this only twenty-four hours before, trying to ask her to dinner and then imagining what might happen later if she said yes.

It was bad enough that he'd beaten her, but _this_, this changed everything.

He rose and opened his door. She looked up at him, and they were frozen for a moment.

"DI Drake…a word?"

There was a beat before she answered with casual tone. "Yes. Of course, Guv."

She rose unsteadily and crossed to his office. He stood aside and let her pass, closing the door behind them.

"What happened to your door?" she asked as he walked back round to the front of his desk.

"Dart accident. Should you be here today?"

She looked out the window over his shoulder. "I'm fine. I just want to get back to work. Get on with my life. Best thing, really." All her words ran together without punctuation.

She seemed somehow thinner and paler than he'd remembered her being only the day before. She was wearing a pair of enormous sunglasses that didn't quite hide the bruises around her eye.

He stood for a moment with his hands in his trouser pockets. His mind had gone blank, and he had no idea what to say to her. "I just thought…you might need some time."

"I'm a police psychologist, Gene," she said quickly. "I've studied post-traumatic stress in victims of violent crime. I know how this is going to go. The first stage is marked by periods of denial, numbness, and emotional repression. The second stage is disintegration and social isolation. The final stage is reintegration. If I'm aware of the process, then I can stay one step ahead of it." She said it all matter-of-factly, as if she were giving a lecture.

There was no arguing with her when she'd made up her mind, and he stood for a moment wondering if he wanted her to stay home more for his own sake than for hers. "All right," he said finally. "Whenever you're ready, you can give a statement. I can get a sketch artist in here…"

"I haven't changed my mind." She shook her head slowly. "I'll report the assault and the mugging, but not the rest."

"Alex, you're a _police officer_!"

"Yes, and that's why I won't report it! 'Blame the victim'. That's the way it is in the press, the courts, even the police. You've seen the way defense counsel treats a victim. Do you really want to put me through that?"

"How can you ask other women to do what you're not willing to do?!"

She had no ready answer for that. She turned and pointed through the blinds. "That lot out there think I'm weak as it is. They'll lose what little respect they have for me if they know what happened. I won't be a liability to this division."

There was nothing to say. He moved to his desk and sank into his chair. She walked to the door and started to go

"Bolls…" She turned to look at him. "I'm…"

_You're what? Sorry? Scared shitless? In a complete blind fucking rage?_

"I'm gonna find him, Bolls."

She gave him a small, sad smile. "Is that all, Guv?"

"Yeah, but I'm putting you on desk duty for the time being."

"Gene…" she protested mildly.

"End of."

She nodded, and he suspected she had no real desire to be out on the streets anytime soon. She looked back at him before closing the door behind herself.

"I'll be all right. I'm fine. Really."

He watched her go back to her desk where she picked up a file and began to skim through it.

He was good at one thing. One bloody thing. Ridding the streets of scum. It was the one thing he could do for her. He couldn't fix her. He couldn't make it all better. He couldn't tell her it didn't matter. This was all he could offer, and she didn't want it.

He threw back his head and drained the rest of his glass.

xxXXxx

_I'm fine. I'll be all right._

She repeated it to herself and anyone else who asked in the days that followed. It got easier as the bruises faded and the stitches came out. She spent her days in a sort of mechanical functioning those first weeks. Just getting by. She woke up, showered, dressed, did her job, moving through it all in a senseless fog. She felt as if she were viewing the world from inside a jar.

But that was all right, because then no one could get in, and she didn't really have to interact with anyone. She could smile and nod and exchange bland pleasantries and keep everyone at arm's length.

Gene might've hurt the most, if she'd been able to feel anything. They had been on the verge of something, something that might have been very, very good. And then they…_weren't_. When they found themselves alone in the break room, one of them would mumble some excuse and hurry out. She went to Luigi's with them every once in awhile, but she no longer sat with Gene at his table in the corner. She would sit with the others, smiling when appropriate and pretending to laugh at their jokes.

She was fine. She was all right.

Then one evening, she'd been in her flat when she heard their voices downstairs. She headed down, and they were coming in from a football match, laughing and shoving each other. She smiled to herself. She remembered nights like this, sitting with Gene, watching the others from their corner.

Gene came in behind them then. There was a cigarette between his lips, and the smoke circled his head. He crossed and leaned on the bar, ground out the fag. He turned to her, their eyes met for a moment. There was a spark, something stirring inside her again. She smiled.

He nodded, turned away. And then it was gone.

She missed this. She missed _him_.

But that was a good thing, wasn't it? Feeling _something_ other than the void?

Yes, the fog was beginning to lift. She was a psychologist, a police officer. She was strong. She could beat this.

She started across the room to him, but she was interrupted.

"Ma'am! It's good to see you!" It was Shaz, who had been dragged along to the match. She had obviously had her fill of male companionship, and she waved Alex over, pointing to the carafe of red wine that Luigi had set in front of her.

"Yes, all right, Shaz," she said, and slid into the booth opposite her. It was too loud for very much conversation, and so they sat drinking their wine. Alex finished off two glasses while Shaz was still working on her first.

Another carafe came, and Luigi's began to empty out. How many glasses had she had now? Four? Or was it just three? Shaz had finally gone over to sit on Chris' lap, and Alex watched Gene at the bar, smoking and drinking a beer.

She was a woman in a man's job. Her femininity, her sexuality had always been important to her, and she felt as if it had been lost to her, like a limb crushed in an accident. It was understandable these past few weeks that the thought of physical intimacy with anyone made her feel ill, but she wouldn't let him take that away from her. She could will herself to do this.

She picked up the empty carafe and her glass and weaved her way to the bar.

"Buy a girl a drink?"

"Looks like you've already had your share."

"You don't approve."

There was a look in his eyes she couldn't quite decipher in her current state. Pain, a quick flicker of it, and then it was gone. "None of my business, Bolly."

She sat on the stool and crossed her legs, one elbow on the bar. "You're not going to spoil my mood tonight, Gene Hunt. Do you know why? Because I. Feel. Good. Really, really good." She plucked a cherry from the tray of garnishes that Luigi kept behind the bar, dangled it over her mouth, pulled it in with her tongue and teeth.

He took a swig of beer and looked up her up and down through narrowed eyes. "What are you doing, Alex?" he asked in a low voice.

"I've been thinking." She walked her fingers across the bar and skimmed the cuff of his shirt.

"'Bout what?"

"About us."

"You were, were you?"

"Yes, I was." She leaned in closer. "I've been thinking that it's time. I think we need to pick up where we left off. Like nothing happened."

He swirled the remains of the beer in his glass for a moment. "But it did happen."

She sighed. "You really are a stupid man, aren't you?"

"All of a sudden I'm stupid."

"Don't you get it? I can _win_. I can _beat this_. I just need to get back on the horse."

"And that's what I am? The horse?"

"If you'd like," she purred.

There it was, that look again. He reached for his money and dropped a handful of notes on the bar. "Go to bed, Bolls," he said gently. He started to move off the barstool, but she reached up and circled her arms around his neck.

"What's the matter, Gene? Don't you want me?" He reached up, pried them gently away.

"Not now. Not like this."

She sank back down onto her stool. "You don't. You don't want me anymore."

"Bolls…"

"Tell me what happened doesn't make a difference. Tell me you still think of me the same way."

There was a dreadful silence. His eyes fell to the floor.

She could feel the tears pricking at the backs of her eyes. He wouldn't see her like this. She turned her body away from his.

"Piss off."

"Come on, Bolls. I'm taking you home." He put a hand on her back, but she pulled away from him.

"Don't! You turned me down once already. You won't get another chance."

"Alex…"

"_Piss off!_"

He stood there for a moment, unbearably close, before picking his coat from the back of the chair and turning to go.

So, that was it. He didn't want her. She was dirty, used. Well, sod him. She was beautiful and alive, and men would want her again. Lots of men. She could have any man she wanted.

She sat that way for some time, feeling miserable and humiliated and alone, until she became aware that Luigi was speaking to the customer who had sidled up next to her.

"What can I get for you, _Signore_?"

"I'll have a pint of lager, and for the lady, whatever she's having."

She looked up at him. Young, fit, blandly handsome. "House Chianti. I'm Alex."

She offered him her hand, and he shook it. "John."

_John_. Perfect. There was an anonymity about it.

"Would you care to join me, John?"

He smiled and eased himself onto the stool next to hers. She drank the wine he had bought her, and there were another few rounds. He was nice and normal and dull, even with his inexpert attempts at flirtation.

She had lost track of how long they had been sitting there when she invited him up to her place. They didn't talk on the way up the stairs, and once inside, she turned to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him in for a kiss. He made a startled noise, but he smiled at his sudden good fortune.

She led him by his skinny tie into her bedroom, doing all the things she remembered doing as if from a checklist. First his shirt, then fumbling with the belt, falling back onto the bed. This would be all right, wouldn't it?

His lips were wet and mushy, and he covered her face with his mouth as if he were trying to inhale her.

"Oh, baby, you're so sexy," he murmured with his wet mouth close to her ear. His clumsy fingers worked at her buttons. She fought at the queasy feeling rising in her.

_Just nerves. Perfectly normal. You can do this._

She was pinned to the bed. His hands kneaded roughly at her breasts. "Do you like this, baby? Do you like it?"

She made a small whimpering noise.

"Yeah, you like it. You want it."

"Please…stop…" Her voice was barely above a whisper.

"And I'm gonna give it to you, baby."

"You're hurting me."

"I'm gonna give it to you good."

"Please…"

"_Real_ good."

He let out a scream then and jumped backwards from the bed. He lifted his hand up and ran his fingers along the visible set of teeth marks in his shoulder. "Fucking hell! You _bit_ me!"

She had drawn herself into the far corner of the bed, pulling her unbuttoned shirt around her. "Get out!"

"Look, lady, I'm not into that! What is wrong with you, anyways?" He grabbed his clothes from off the floor.

"_Get the fuck out of here!_"

He pulled his trousers on and hooked his fingers into the backs of his shoes. "Gladly! You're barking, you know that?"

He was gone then, half-dressed. She heard the door close, and then the sound of his bare feet running down the stairs. She bolted from the bed and into the other room, where she locked and chained the door.

She sank onto the sofa then, pulled her knees to her chest. There was just a soft trickle of tears at first. Then her body began to shake with sobs, and she rocked herself back and forth.

No, she hadn't been able to beat it. They called it "disintegration" in all her clever police psychology literature. This was what it was like.

No, she wasn't fine.

END CHAPTER THREE


	4. The Only Way Out

A/N: I hope this one will be a bit more upbeat than the previous 3! It's short, but I thought we needed something happy. It's not over for Alex, but things are looking better….

xxXXxx

**CHAPTER FOUR**

Her desk was still empty.

He'd been watching the doors into CID all morning, but maybe she'd come in when he'd gone to the toilet. Maybe she was getting a cup of tea in the other room. Chris was there alone, eating his lunch, when Gene walked in.

"Where's Drake?" he snapped.

Chris jumped, and the spoon he'd been trying to balance off the end of his nose fell to the table with a clatter.

"Don'know, Guv. Haven't seen her all morning."

Gene cursed under his breath and strode back into his office. He stood, hands on hips, peering through the glass of his newly-repaired door.

She hadn't come in. She'd come in every morning since it happened without fail, mornings when he'd known she hadn't wanted to. No matter how hard she had tried, and she _had_ tried, he'd always been able to tell when she was afraid and trying to show the world she wasn't.

The way she was last night. All that "back on the horse" bollocks. Christ, how many times in the past year had he wanted that invitation? But not now. Not when it would have been clear as day to a blind man that she was completely terrified.

He could blame it all on her, but the truth was, he wasn't sure how he felt anymore. The world had always been divided into two groups of women: women like your mam or your missus that you wanted to protect and put on a pedestal, and birds you just wanted to shag. Then there was Alex. Oh, he'd wanted to shag her, and no mistake. But she didn't quite fit in either category.

Before it happened, he'd tried to deal with it all with the usual boasts and crude double entendres, and maybe he could convince himself that that was all he wanted from her. He couldn't do that anymore. He couldn't hurt her that way. So, he had distanced himself, and then when she had asked him if he still wanted her, he had stood there mutely like a useless tosser and then left her there when she probably needed him most.

"Guv?"

"_What is it, Shaz!?"_

She blinked her eyes in surprise as he roared at her from behind his desk. "Oh! Sorry, Guv. I just…" She chanced a step inside and handed him a piece of paper. "I forgot to give you this earlier."

"What's this?"

"Message from DI Drake." He looked up at Shaz expectantly. "She phoned to say she was poorly and wouldn't be coming in today."

"Did she say what was wrong?"

"Just said she thought she was coming down with a cold and didn't want to give it to everyone else. Said she was taking all her leave and probably would be out all week."

"And you didn't think to tell me this earlier?!"

Shaz looked at him wide-eyed. "Sorry, Guv! It slipped my mind!"

He softened. "All right. Never mind. Thanks, Shaz."

She hurried from his office, and he looked down at the paper. There was a short message scrawled in Shaz's hand, followed by Alex's phone number. He looked at it for a moment before crumpling it up and tossing it toward the bin. It bounced off the rim and ended up in the corner where he left it as a reminder of what a complete bastard he was.

It was still there as the end of the week neared. She hadn't come in, hadn't rung. Neither had he. It was late afternoon when he came through the office. Shaz was just hanging up the phone, and he thought for a moment it had been Alex.

Instead she held up a message. "Guv, I've got a message for DI Drake. An informant, I think. Said he needed to talk to her. What do you think I should do with it?"

"Give it here."

"Where is DI Drake, anyway?" asked Chris. "She's been out all week."

"_Women's troubles,"_ Ray said, and rolled his eyes.

"She's got a _cold_," Shaz corrected sharply from across the room. Ray ignored her and sat with the stub of his fag pinched between his fingers.

"Bet it's got something to do with that hiding she took a few weeks ago." No one responded, but he continued. "Lucky all he did was steal her handbag. And what the bloody hell was she doing in a dark alley that time of night? Should've known better. _DI Drake,_" he grumbled. "That's just asking for it, if you want to know."

Gene had crossed the room to Ray's desk before the words were barely out of his mouth. He had Ray by the back of the neck and slammed his cheek into his desk, pinning him there.

"That is your superior officer, _Sgt Carling_! Show her some bloody respect!"

He could see the others looking at him in shock. He released Ray and took a step back.

"All right, Guv! All right!" Ray reached up and rubbed his cheek hurtfully. "Bloody hell, I think you broke something!"

Gene stalked into his office, where his eye was caught by the waded-up paper that had rolled into the corner. He stooped and held it in a hand for a minute before taking his coat from the hook and heading back out of his office.

"Where you going, Guv?" Chris asked

He didn't answer but slipped his coat on and was gone.

xxXXxx

He didn't bother knocking. He knew there would be no answer, even if she were in the flat. He got the spare key from Luigi and pushed the door open. The front room was lit only by the light of the late-afternoon sun. There were take-away containers and wrappers strewn across the floor. He could see the sink was stacked with dirty dishes, and next to it, flies circled above a bowl of brown fruit. Everything smelled of food gone-off and stale air.

"Alex!" There was no response, and he tried to ignore the uneasy feeling beginning to gnaw at him. "_Alex!_"

There were the remains of breakfast on the table – a half-eaten bowl of Weetabix now turned the consistency of wallpaper paste. He called out for her again and crossed into the bedroom. She was lying on her side curled into a tight ball, dressed in her pyjamas. She seemed not to see or hear him at first as he said her name.

"Alex?" He crept into her room, knocking over an empty wine bottle, and eased himself onto the bed next to her.

There was no response, and he slid an arm underneath her to pull her into a sitting position. His eyes fearfully scanned the room for an empty pill bottle, fearing the worst. "Alex, look at me. Are you all right? Have you taken something?" he asked softly.

She looked at him unseeingly for a moment, and then shook her head slowly. She blinked then, and the light seemed to come on again in her eyes. "No."

"You're all right. It's all right." He smoothed the matted hair from her face and pulled her against him. Her body was stiff, and her arms hung limply at her sides. "You're all right, Alex," he said again.

He could feel her body soften in his arms then. Her head dropped onto his shoulder, and he cupped it with one hand. She began to shake with hard sobs. He had held her like this in the alley when she had cried before, but that was out of shock and fear. This was the release of emotion, and it was almost unbearable to watch.

"He hurt me," she sobbed.

"I know. But you're all right." He rocked her against him.

"I'm not. I'm not all right."

"You will be. I promise."

"You can't promise."

"I'm the Gene Genie."

She quieted a bit, shuddered against him, still crying.

"Why did this happen?"

"Because there are bad people in this world, Alex. But you've got people who love you and need you."

He held her there for a long while until she stopped, and finally she pushed herself gently away from him and wiped her face with her pyjama sleeve. Her eyes were raw and red. "You're _here_," she said.

"'Course."

She looked away, searching for words. He could feel emotion rising off of her like heat from the pavement.

"I didn't think you wanted to see me. How can you even look at me?"

"Well." He cleared his throat. "Not like this, anyways. You look like you've been dragged through a hedge backwards," he said, but his voice was tender. She smiled, and it was lovely.

Then her smile faded, and she reached up and rested her fingers against his face. It was a gesture so small and intimate that it sent a voluntary shiver snaking up his spine.

After a moment, she rose from the bed and pulled a dressing gown from a hook inside her wardrobe. She left the room without a word, as if it was understood that he would be there, that he would wait.

He sat on the bed until he heard the sound of the water running, and then he rose and went into the kitchen.

xxXXxx

She stood under the hot stream of the water for a long time, long after she had rinsed herself clean of soap and shampoo.

She ran her hand along her flat belly and down across her hips and thighs. She remembered being pregnant with Molly and then nursing her, trying to pump in the ladies toilet at work. She had felt like her body wasn't her own. She felt like that now. It had been taken away from her.

And then Gene had held her in his arms with the expectation of nothing more. Her body was hers. She would have that back again. Someday.

When she finally got out of the shower, she pulled her dressing gown back on and went into the other room. Gene was there, hoovering her flat with a cigarette dangling from his lip. She smiled and leaned against the door. There was a fresh breeze coming in from the window, and he had cleared out all the rubbish.

He turned it off when he saw her there and looked at her sheepishly. "I, erm, made some tea. If you'd like." He nodded toward the two cups of tea he'd set on the coffee table.

"Are you going to cook me dinner, too?" she said with a small smile.

"I might do. You could use a good meal. Women should look like women, not pubescent teenage boys."

She didn't mind the teasing. He had spent the last few weeks walking on eggshells around her or avoiding her altogether. If he was teasing her, it meant he felt comfortable enough to do it. It felt like normal.

She sat down on the sofa and he followed, uneasily sitting in the corner opposite her, watching as she sipped at her tea. For the first time, she didn't feel terrified of being alone in a room with him.

There was a silence before she spoke.

"I'm sorry. About the other night."

"You've got nothing to apologise for, Alex."

She covered her face with her hands. "Oh, God. What must you have thought?"

"Doesn't matter what I think."

But it did. She took a sip of tea. "What I said. About us starting where we left off…"

He looked away. "Alex, you don't have to..."

"Please. Let me finish." She took a deep breath. "I don't know if I can trust you. I don't know if I can trust any man again." She sniffed hard against the tears she could feel welling up in her eyes. "But I want to."

She could see the mix of emotions playing over his face. She waited for a moment for him to speak, but instead, he slid his hand across the space between them and laced his fingers through hers.

She had done nothing but sleep on and off for the past few days, but she suddenly felt exhausted. She moved closer to him, and he draped his arm around her. Finally, she lowered her head onto his shoulder.

"Sometimes, Alex," he said gently. She loved the sound of his voice rumbling up out of his chest. "The only way out of a pile of shit, is through it."

She smiled to herself and wanted to say something to him, something about Gene Hunt, philosopher and poet, but by that time, she had already drifted asleep.

END CHAPTER FOUR


	5. Moving Forward

**A/N: **This is a short chapter. Kind of rushed, so I apologise. But life intervenes, and I probably won't be able to update again for a week or so. Things get a little angsty again for Gene, but better times are on their way, I promise.

xxXXxx

**CHAPTER FIVE**

She rejoined the world. Slowly, at first. Baby steps, fragile and unsteady.

There were times when she felt like retreating again. One morning, she stepped into an empty lift in an office building when a man slipped in just as the doors were sliding shut. Young, slightly balding, stocky build.

He stood there, hands folded in front of him, looking up indifferently at the numbers as they climbed, but she could feel her heart begin to pound. Sweat beads popped out on her forehead.

She had meant to go to the 12th floor , but she jabbed at buttons randomly. Second floor, third floor, it didn't matter. The lift finally came to a stop at the fifth floor, and she stumbled out. She stood there leaning against the wall, taking in long breaths until her heart rate finally returned to normal.

But it was a start. And for every moment like that, there were moments that felt like small victories. Simple moments at the shops, at work.

Moments with Gene.

They sat together again at Luigi's, sharing a bottle in their corner, taking it all in with a shared bemusement. She often caught him watching her from across the room with concern in his eyes, but instead of looking away again, there was a small smile, a little nod of encouragement that only she was meant to see. If there was still some indefinable distance between them, it would close in time.

It was one night at Luigi's. The evening was winding down, and all were pleasantly drowsy from the wine and the late hour. He was crossing back to their table from the bar, and she looked up and watched him, striding with that loose-limbed swagger across the floor.

_God, he's handsome_.

It was the first time she had thought of him that way since it had happened. He _was_. He was handsome.

"What are you grinning at?" he asked as he set the last round on the table in front of them.

"Nothing." She rested her chin in the palm of her hand. "Never mind."

"You're up to something."

She didn't answer but sipped at the glass of red wine with a raised eyebrow.

The next morning, she waited for a free moment, took in a deep breath and poked her head into his office.

"Can I have a word?"

He nodded, and she entered, closing the door behind her.

"What is it with you lately, Bolls? You look like the cat that swallowed the canary."

"I just wanted you to know." She ignored him and launched in. "I've been seeing someone."

He looked up from his desk, blinked. "Oh. Right."

"And it's going well. Really well."

"Well, isn't _that_ good news," he said, covering hurt with sarcasm. "Congratulations to you both."

She cocked her head in incomprehension, and then touched her forehead with a laugh. "Oh, God! No! Not like that! I mean…I'm seeing someone. Professionally."

"Oh." He looked as if he had no more idea of how to respond to that than when he thought she was shagging someone else.

"I know how you feel about the mental health profession, but it's only temporary, and I felt like I needed to talk to someone, someone completely objective. And it's helping. It is. I just…wanted you to know.''

She stood waiting for some kind of response, but he sat there with his arms folded across his chest.

"Well, you're obviously doing something right."

"Oh?"

"It's good to see you looking like yourself, Bolls."

She could feel herself blush a little, and she shuffled her feet in nervous anticipation before going on.

"The other reason I came in here. Was. To ask if maybe I could take you up on that dinner offer. If it still stands. We can stay in. I can cook, if you'd like."

He considered it a moment, a slight smile on his face. "It still stands. And I'm taking you out."

There was a sort of free-floating anxiety as she got dressed that night, a sort of unpleasant déjà vu of the last time she had readied herself for a date.

But then he arrived to pick her up at eight, nervous as a schoolboy and smelling as if he had bathed in Old Spice. But he was charming and funny and gentle, and she laughed, actually _laughed_. There was a time not too long before that she had convinced herself she would never be capable of it again.

Dinner ended, and they drove back home in the dark silence. She could feel her heart flutter as they climbed the steps up to her flat. She pushed the door open and took a few steps inside. When she turned around, he was standing there on the other side of the doorway, hands in his trouser pockets.

"You can come in. If you'd like," she said softly.

He stood for a moment as if he were thinking it over and then took a tentative step inside.

"I had…a really nice time tonight, Gene. Thank you."

"You're very welcome."

She laughed, a lovely effervescent laugh. "God, I feel like I'm fifteen again coming home from my first date."

"That Evan bloke let you out when you were fifteen? I'd've sent you to a convent school 'til you were thirty."

"God, I pity your daughter," she said with a laugh, but he looked away. "If you ever have one," she added quickly, but that somehow made it worse. "Well. Anyway. Good night, Gene."

She swallowed hard, and they leaned in towards each other. There was an awkward bobbing of heads before she reached up and placed a hand on his shoulder.

Their lips met, and there was a kiss, tender, delicate and hesitant. She broke away after a moment, her hand still on his shoulder. She shivered once.

"'Night, Bolls." His voice was low and husky. And then he was gone. Out and down the stairs. She stood and waited until she heard the door out onto the street close. She danced then, across the floor, giggling like a giddy teenager into her bedroom. She was still at it, humming and dancing, as she undressed for bed and fell into a heavy, peaceful sleep.

Other nights like that followed. Dinners where he told colourful stories about his army service and the GMP. Quieter ones about his childhood and his brother. They would go to films, and after the weather was getting warm again, they would walk home with her hand slipped into his. She missed that, the feeling of closeness. The small, intimate gestures of belonging.

Then there was a time where she realised she missed _all_ of it. The feeling of a man's body against hers, falling asleep in his arms. She wanted that with Gene. Not now, but soon. But each night, the evening would end with a kiss that grew more insistent as the weeks went by. He never pressed. He'd leave with an understanding, "'Night, Bolls."

There was another evening. The skies had opened up as they left a restaurant a few blocks from her flat. They had dodged the rain with his coat over both of their heads, laughing all the way, and when they reached her flat, they were both wet up to their knees.

They fell inside, dripping puddles of water on the floor. Then she turned around, and he stood with rain sheeting off of his coat.

He stammered, turned toward the door. "Well. Reckon I should be going."

"No, no! At least dry off a bit. I'll get you a towel." She kissed him quickly on his cheek and hurried off into the bathroom.

He stood hesitantly in the middle of the floor, shivering from the rain dripping down the back of his shirt collar. He could hear the water running in the bathroom. She was singing to herself, and then she called out to him. "I'll be out in a minute. Why don't you open a bottle of wine?"

What was she doing? He hadn't spent more than five minutes in this flat since that day he'd found her here cocooned in bed. Now all of a sudden, she wanted wine.

He found himself moving anyway into the kitchen, where he opened the bottle of wine from the rack and pulled two glasses down from the cupboard. He crossed back into the living room and set the bottle and the two glasses on the table, standing apprehensively in the middle of the room.

When she came out she had a towel draped over one arm. She had taken off her wet clothes and appeared to be wearing nothing but a silky black dressing gown.

He could feel a knot form at the base of his throat. Her face was bright and scrubbed free of makeup. She smiled and crossed to him. So warm and lovely.

"There you are." She tossed him the towel, and he ran it against his damp head once or twice before crossing to the sofa. All power of speech seemed to evade him

She kneeled next to him on the sofa and raised her glass. "A toast."

"What for?"

"To us. To you. I want you to know how happy I've been, and I want to thank you for everything."

He clinked his against hers and held it mutely in his hand while she drank. She took a few sips and then set it on the coffee table as she leaned in towards him, laying a soft kiss on his mouth.

She was warm and soft and smelled of a summer garden. He kissed her back, drinking in the feel and the smell of her soft, damp skin. He was aware that she had taken his wine glass from him and had placed it next to hers on the table. She sat back on her heels for a moment. Her eyes flickered across his face, and she stroked his cheek with the back of her hand.

She leaned back in, more insistent now, and he kissed her, his hands wrapping around her waist. His jacket was peeled away, tie loosened, and she pulled him down closer to her.

Her dressing gown slipped from her shoulder, exposing one breast. He kissed her, fingers ran over the bare skin of her collar bone. "You can touch me," she whispered, her breath uneven now.

His fingers ran along the rise of her breast. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him down, her mouth next to his ear. "I want you, Gene. I want you."

Trembling fingers fumbled with buttons and zippers. "Yes…I want you," she said again in a rough, yearning whisper. "_Gene…_"

There was the smell and the feeling of her, so lovely. He lowered himself, pushing at clothes. This was what he had wanted. He wanted her. He did.

"Gene?"

There was nothing but stillness. He sat up, ruffled his hair with his fingers. He wouldn't look at her.

"Gene, are you all right?" She pulled herself up and tied her dressing gown around her.

He leaned forward, elbows on knees. "I'm sorry, Bolly."

"Why? What is it? What's wrong?"

"I'm…" He shook his head dumbly. "I can't."

"What is it?" There were tears in her small, childlike voice. "Have I…have I done something wrong?"

"No, no," he mumbled and rose from the sofa. "I'm sorry."

He retrieved his jacket and his coat from the floor, not bothering to put it on.

"Gene, please, don't go. We can talk about this."

"Don't want to talk, Bolly." His voice ached. He paused for a moment with his hand on the doorknob. "I'm sorry."

He left, quietly closing her door behind him. He stood on the pavement outside for a time, letting the rain pour down over him, before he got in the Quattro and drove away.

**END CHAPTER FIVE**


	6. Talk to Him

**A/N:** Thanks to all of you for reading and reviewing! I appreciate your nice comments. This next chapter is very talky with not a lot of action. Don't know if it works and don't know if Gene would ever put himself in this situation, but it was sort of an experiment! Hope it isn't too hard to follow.

xxXXxx

**CHAPTER 6 **

"You _can_ sit down, Mr Hunt."

"Won't be stopping that long."

He'd been there for ten minutes, moving restlessly, making sarky comments about the Persian rug and the dark wood and how he'd been called to the headmaster's office, all with a barely masked hostility. The man behind the desk leaned back in his chair with his fingertips pressed together.

"If you don't intend on staying, why did you come at all?"

"Said I would. I'm a man of my word."

"Who made you come here?"

Gene visibly bristled. "Look, no one _made_ me come here, right? Someone asked me to, and in a weak and increasingly regrettable moment, I said I would. Now you scribble on your little notepad, toss in some German gibberish, and send me on my way, eh?"

"Mr Hunt, you're not required to be here. If you don't want to be, by all means, go. But the fact that you're still here after fifteen minutes of pacing indicates to me that you believe you have a problem and you think perhaps I can help you. If that isn't the case, I'd rather not waste my time or yours."

The man nodded towards the door. There was a momentary standoff. Gene finally crossed to the chair and folded himself into it, trying to project an air of casual cool.

"Make sure you write down there that I never said I have a problem."

The other man opened up a thin file and scanned the single piece of paper that had been stapled to the inside.

"You're here on a referral from a colleague of mine. Is that correct?"

"Yeah. Reckon so."

"She's been seeing someone you know."

"Alex Drake. She's my DI. Detective Inspector."

"So, Alex is a work colleague, is that it?"

"Yeah. We were…I thought…once." He squirmed and looked toward the window. "She's a work colleague."

"Alex's therapist primarily works with people who have been survivors of violent crimes. Can you tell me what happened?"

"She had a bit of a hard time of it a few months back," he said genially, as if he were talking about nothing more notable than a minor scrape on the M25.

"A _hard time_."

"That's what I said."

"What happened?"

He shrugged. "Bloke took her handbag. Gave her a black eye. Knocked her about."

"She was knocked about? Is that what it was?"

"Yeah. Knocked about. Punched. Roughed up," Gene said impatiently.

"Is that what really happened to her?"

There was a long, silent pause where the only sound was the persistent ticking of the mantle clock. Gene finally slumped forward and sat with his elbows on his knees, his head low. His voice was broken.

"She was raped."

His words hung there in the thick silence, and finally the other man spoke.

"How did that make you feel?"

"How do you think it bloody made me feel? One of my team was hurt!"

"Your hostility is palpable, Mr Hunt. I doubt you'd be here if she were just 'one of your team'." He went on after a moment in quiet understanding. "She's not only a team member, but a woman as well. Someone I gather you care about. You must feel very protective of her."

"I do. Yeah"

"I know you must have felt helpless in some ways."

Gene shifted his weight, still trying to maintain that air of detachment. "She wouldn't even report it. Said it was a mugging. Do you know how much time and attention handbag snatchings get? Bugger all."

"But what about emotionally? Did she…lean on you? Confide in you?"

"They make us go on those bloody 'community sensitivity' courses at the Met. How to talk to victims, how not to offend the latest group of immigrants."

"That's not quite what I asked you."

He squirmed, cleared his throat, anything to keep from answering. He patted at his jacket pockets. "Can I smoke in here or is that not allowed?"

"If you need to." Gene reached for the pack. "But I'd rather you didn't."

Gene muttered something inaudible and tucked the pack of fags away.

"It's a terrible crime," the man continued, shaking his head.

Gene's mouth pulled down at the corners. "Yeah. Yeah it is. Women and kids. That's the hardest."

"Especially when it's a woman you're close to, I imagine."

Gene was silent. He slouched in the chair, looked out the window and folded his arms across his chest.

"How did what happened to Alex make you feel about her?"

"What the bloody hell does that mean?"

"I thought the question was rather unambiguous."

"It wasn't her fault," he snapped in irritation. "She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why should that have anything to do with the way I feel about her?"

"I often find that there is a very large difference between the way we think things should be and the way they actually are, Mr Hunt." He smiled benignly. "You had romantic feelings toward Alex in the past, is that right?"

"_Romantic?_ You mean did I write her poncey poetry and send her Belgian chocolates?"

"Fine. Did you _fancy_ her?

"She's bloody gorgeous. You'd have to be cold on a slab not to fancy her, and I've still got a pulse. Although sitting here with you, I'm quickly losing the will to live."

The man gave a good-humoured sigh. "Did you enjoy her company? It's not a difficult question. How did you _feel_ about her?"

"She does my head in. Too clever for her own good. Never know what she's on about half the time." Then there was a pause. His mouth curled up at one corner. "She's all right. For a posh bird."

"Did you and she have a sexual relationship?"

"Fucking hell! That's a bit personal, isn't it?" he said, but the man looked back at him impassively. Gene's eyes fell to the floor, his voice masking the bitterness underneath. "We were meant to have dinner the night…the night it happened. She was on her way to Boots to buy a new pair of stockings. Took a shortcut through the alley because she was worried a pack of skinheads might harass her."

"After the rape…you resumed your personal relationship with her?"

"Tried. Yeah."

"What happened?"

"Went to dinner. Went to the cinema. She even dragged me to that bloody thing with the dancing kitties."

"And how was it?"

"About two hours and a half hours too long."

The man smiled. "No, I meant your relationship. Were you in love with Alex?"

"_Love,"_ he sneered. "What's love got to do with anything? Nothing buggers up a relationship quicker than love."

"All right. Was there any physical intimacy?"

"You mean did we shag?" Gene asked with a snort.

"There's more to physical intimacy than just shagging."

Gene shrugged. "Had a bit of a kiss and a cuddle. She…she wasn't ready for anything else."

"Did that bother you?"

"Bother me?" He rose suddenly, paced the room again. "What's this got to do with anything? Was I shagging her? Was I bothered? That's what's wrong with this country today. People having verbal diarrhoea going on about their feelings. Grown men whinging because their mummy took away their dummy when they were two. In my day," he said slapping his chest, "you got on with things."

"What is it that you're 'getting on' from, Mr Hunt?"

"What?"

"I asked if you were bothered, and you responded that you thought people should just get on with things. That implies to me that you _were_ bothered by something, but you chose to 'get on with it.'"

"You're twisting my words, you crafty bastard."

"What happened?"

"Nothing happened!" Gene had begun to pace again.

"Your whole demeanour changed when the subject of physical intimacy came up – "

"Bollocks!"

" – And I think you feel guilty about something. _What happened_? Does it have something to do with your physical relationship with Alex?"

"Piss off!"

"Why are you here, Mr Hunt?"

"You're the one went to the posh schools. Why don't you tell me?"

"I find it's better if my patients work it out for themselves. Despite your obvious contempt for the mental health profession, you walked through that door this morning because the person who asked you to come here is important to you. But you _stayed_ because something happened, and on some level, you want to fix it."

Gene stopped, bent forward with his hands on his knees as if he had been punched in the gut. He stood after a moment, then dropped into the chair. It was a long time before he spoke. His voice had dropped, low and heavy.

"She didn't want to at first. After what she'd been through, I understood that. Tried to be patient. But then she came out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a dressing gown. Beautiful. I knew what she wanted. I knew what she expected, but…" His voice cut off, and he looked away in shame.

"But what?"

He sat with his elbows on his knees. He dropped his forehead into the palm of his hand and rubbed at his temples. "I couldn't."

"Didn't want to or couldn't?"

"I dunno." He ruffled his hair. "Couldn't."

"Well, it's not all that unusual for a man of your age…"

"What you mean 'a man of my age'?!" he erupted. "Got nothing to do with my age!"

"I'm sure you're a man of remarkable virility, Mr Hunt," he said dryly.

"Now you're just taking the piss."

"But if there isn't a physical cause, there must be a psychological cause."

"_Psychological cause_," Gene said with contempt. "Rubbish."

"What, then?"

"I don't know! Maybe I had a bit of the brewer's droop! Maybe I was tired!"

"Do you believe that?"

Gene paused for a moment, the wheels in his mind spinning futilely.

"Fuck!" he said, leaning back in the chair. "_Fuck!_"

"Why do you think you couldn't perform?"

"Fucking hell! Do you have to put it that way?"

"_Something_ had changed. Were you still attracted to her?"

"'_Christ_. 'Course I was. She's been waggling her bum in my face for a year. Couldn't concentrate most days."

"Then why?"

"I don't know!"

"Why couldn't you go through with it? If it wasn't because you were no longer attracted to her, than it had to be something else. What was that?"

"I said I don't fucking know."

Gene's voice was low and menacing. The other man looked at him with narrowed eyes and bounced the rubber end of his pencil against the desk for a moment.

"Was this the first time after the attack that either one of you had initiated sex?"

Gene frowned for a moment and exhaled. He picked at a loose thread on his trousers. "Right after it happened," he started wearily. "Just a couple of weeks later. She was drunk. Said she wanted to 'get back on the horse.'"

"And you turned her down. Why?"

"She was legless! Not to mention absolutely bloody terrified! She wasn't ready. I was just trying to do the right thing by her."

"So, you turned her down for her sake, rather than for your own lack of interest. What about this last time? Do you think she was emotionally ready for a sexual relationship?"

"Christ. I don't know!" Gene sat there for a moment. He gave a small shrug and then nodded wordlessly.

"Then this time when you turned her down, it wasn't about _her _feelings it was about _yours_."

"Oh, we're not on about _feelings_ again, are we?" he said with visible disgust. "What do you want from me? You want me to weep like a little girl and tell you how I'm a broken man because my dad never told me he loved me?"

"Didn't he?"

"Fuck off!"

"Why couldn't you go through with it? What was going through your mind?"

"Nothing!"

"Oh, come now, Mr Hunt. What was it that you were afraid of?"

"_I'm not afraid of anything!"_

"You wouldn't be here if you weren't. What stopped you? What was it?"

"All right! You want to know what I was afraid of?" Gene rose suddenly, sending the chair teetering back for a moment. "That I'd hurt her. That she'd be thinking about it. Thinking about what that nonce did to her while I was with her. That every time I touched her, she'd be thinking of _him_."

"That's not an unusual feeling for a man whose partner has gone through what Alex has gone through."

"I'm a police officer! I'm supposed to be better than that!"

"That may give you more insight into crime statistics, but I'm not sure why you would think it gives you any more control over your emotions. Alex has a background in psychology, for heaven's sake, and even _she's_ not immune to the kind of trauma people in your situation go through. Don't you think you're being rather hard on yourself?" Gene didn't answer. He ran a hand down his rough, unshaven face. He opened his mouth to speak, but then he closed it again, pressing his lips into a colourless line. "Is that _really_ what you were afraid of?"

Gene stood in the middle of the floor with his hands pressed into his trouser pockets, his shoulders drawn down. The man went on. "The fact that she was raped – "

"Oh, you just never know when to shut your gob, do you?"

" – did it change the way you felt about her?"

"You already asked me that."

"And you didn't answer." Gene crossed and looked out the window into the courtyard below for a long moment before the other man spoke again. "How do you think Alex felt about herself after this happened to her?"

"I'm a bloke. How the bloody hell should I know?"

"That's too easy an answer. How do you think she felt about herself afterwards?"

"Christ on a bloody bike. How should I know what goes through a woman's head? Least of all _hers._"

"I have to believe you're a man with at least a modicum of insight and sensitivity. From what I've read in the file I received from Alex's therapist –"

"If you've read it, what are you asking me for?"

" – You found her in the alley. You are the only person she confided in about what really happened. How do you think Alex felt?"

"I don't know!"

"You must have some idea. As you said, you're a police officer. You probably see a discouraging number of rape survivors every week, Mr Hunt. You must have some idea how _they_ feel."

"Yeah! But they're not…!" He turned away from the window, and walked aimlessly to the other side of the room before stopping and leaning with defeat against the door.

"They're not what?"

Gene's voice was soft. "They're not _her."_

The other man matched his tone, low and sympathetic. "How do you think Alex felt?"

"Humiliated. Dirty." He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the door.

"And did you think those things about her? Did you think she was dirty?"

"'Course not! What kind of heartless bastard do you think I am? 'Course I didn't think she…" His words died in his throat. He stumbled over to the chair and collapsed again. "Fuck. I don't know. _Fucking shitting hell._"

"Why couldn't you go through with it? The other night, when she signaled that she was emotionally ready to begin sexual relations – "

"'_Emotionally ready to begin sexual relations'_? You're ready for Mills & Boon, you are."

"You're avoiding, Mr Hunt. Had your feelings changed toward Alex as a result of what happened to her?"

"Quit bloody asking me that!"

"Then answer the question."

"Yes! All right? Happy now? I can't stop thinking about it. Every time I close my bloody eyes. I keep thinking…about her. With him." Gene's voice was heavy with shame and anger.

"She wasn't _with_ him. Not in a mutual sense. It was forced on her. It was sex, but it was unwanted, unbidden sex."

_Sex._ Gene flinched at the words. He raised his hands and slowly curled his fingers around his ears. "I know. I bloody know that. But how could I…how could I…_touch_ her like that, when every time I closed my eyes, that's what I saw? Her in that fucking alley." He made a small, inarticulate noise of pain and laced his fingers around the back of his head.

"Is that what really bothered you? The fact that you saw her as a victim?"

"No." And then a beat. "Fuck me. I don't know."

"What about the man who did this to her?"

Gene's eyes shot up suddenly. He stiffened in his chair. "What about him?"

"You said that Alex wouldn't report the rape. She reported it as a mugging. How did you feel about that?"

His jaw tightened. He cleared his throat. "Wasn't my business."

"Of course it was. You're what, a DCI? You have an interest in…"

"_I don't wanna talk about this, all right_?" Gene suddenly raged. "Change the bloody subject!"

The other man sat back in his chair, surprised. A look of discovery flickered over his face.

"How did you really feel about the fact that she wouldn't report the crime?"

"It happened on my patch! I should be able to – "

"No," he interrupted. "Not just as a police officer. How did you feel about it…as a _man."_

"I told you to shut your fucking gob!" Gene leaned over with his hands pressed against the front of the man's desk.

"How did you feel, Mr Hunt?! You were angry, weren't you?"

"Of course I was angry!" He turned and kicked the leg of his chair, sending it skidding across the floor and banging into the wall opposite. "I wanted to lock him in a cell with two 25-stone bastards until his arsehole was the size of St Paul's Dome. No. _Worse._ I wanted him to die a slow and miserable bloody death. I wanted to rip out his fucking heart with my bare fucking hands and shove it down his miserable throat! _That's_ how it bloody made me feel."

"Why? Because she was 'one of your team?'"

"No! Because _no one does that someone I love_!"

"You _love_ her. You _love_ Alex."

"Of course I bloody love her! What the bloody hell did you think? If I'd wanted to shag her just to shag her, I would've done it a year ago. She's the only person who has ever made me want to try and do just a little bit better, to maybe, just _maybe _try to be not just a better copper, but a better human bloody being! She's the only person who's ever really given half a shit about me. And then some piece of human filth rapes her in some shitty alley behind a curry shop, and it all goes away!"

"Why? Why does it all go away?"

"Because!"

"Because why?"

"Because…I don't know!"

"You do! Why does it all go away?"

"_BECAUSE I COULDN'T HELP HER!" _It poured out of him in impotent fury. He stood huffing breathlessly, rubbing at his eyes in deep shame with the heels of his hands. "I couldn't do anything! I couldn't do a bloody thing! I wasn't there! Someone hurt her, and I wasn't bloody there!"

"How?" the man asked with easy compassion. "How could you possibly have been there?"

"_I'm the Gene Genie!_ I should've been there! I should've stopped it! I could've found him, if she'd let me." Gene staggered in an aimless circle. "And afterwards, I was fucking bloody useless. All this time, she's asked _nothing_ from me. And then she wanted one thing. To make her feel like she wasn't…_used_, and I couldn't bloody do it. Then to make it worse, I got up and walked out on her like a shitarse!"

It was as if something had lifted from his shoulders, but he had been left drained and exhausted from carrying the weight. He leaned against the back of the chair until his breathing slowed, and then finally sat.

"I know it may be difficult for you to accept that you are in any way average, Mr Hunt," the man began gently, "but you're not the first man to ever feel this way."

"She didn't deserve any of this. She doesn't need some useless toerag."

"What she doesn't need is for you to _fix_ her. Right now, she doesn't even need you to find the man who did this to her. She just needs _you_. To listen. To talk to her. Her trust has been shattered. And if you ask me if there are going to be moments when you're both still going to feel frightened and confused, I don't know the answer to that. But it _will_ get better. And if she tells you how she's feeling, if she shows you that she's ready, then you need to trust her. Because if you can't trust _her_, how is she ever going to learn to trust _you?_"

Gene nodded quickly, sucking at the inside of his cheek, unable to look at him. The other man let a silence pass before he spoke.

"Well. It looks as if our time is up, Mr Hunt."

Gene looked up at him numbly, and then pulled himself to his feet. He stood in front of the desk for a moment, shifting his weight awkwardly and trying to gather his thoughts. "So, you think…you think. Maybe. It'll be all right. Me and Alex."

"Give it time. But yes. I think you might be."

Gene started across the room and turned again as he reached the door. "You're not half bad. For a bloody witch doctor."

"I'll take that as a very high compliment indeed." The man smiled at him gently. "Shall I have my receptionist make another appointment for you?"

It was as if some storm had passed, clouds had parted, and there was a glimpse of Gene again then. He squared his shoulders and smiled back at the man with wry humour. He took the pack of fags out of his jacket pocket, he lit one and held it up to his lips. He took a long drag and then spoke.

"Not on your bloody life."

**END CHAPTER SIX**


	7. The Last Piece

**A/N: **Here is the final chapter! Thanks so much for reading and reviewing and special thanks to cats-tale for early advice and reading. I was really nervous about posting this story, and I'm so grateful that you've all stuck with it despite the subject matter. I hope I've done it justice. Life has been insane for the past week or so with no relief in sight, so this chapter is very rushed, and it didn't get the attention I'd probably like. But I thought if I didn't write it now, I probably never would! And I did promise Gene and Alex and happy ending. I hope this will do.

xxXXxx

**CHAPTER SEVEN **

There was only the sound of the windshield wipers beating back and forth frantically against the driving rain.

After all that had happened, the plans she'd made, they had ended up _here_, wherever here was. Lost, hungry, short-tempered. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Things had been going well since that night he had stalked out of her flat a couple of weeks earlier. After he left, she had sat there in the sofa in a kind of numb shock.

_He'll come back. He'll phone, _she thought. _He __will__._

But several hours later, long after she should have given up, she was still sitting there with her eyes darting back and forth between the door and the silent phone.

It was late. She was exhausted, feeling as if her limbs were made of lead. She lifted herself from the sofa and shuffled into her bedroom. It was then she caught sight of herself in the mirror there, half-dressed in her silky robe. She had sprayed herself with a new scent for him, at her wrists and behind her bare knees. She could smell it now.

She was a fool. Why would he want her? He would never want her, and for a moment, the pain of what had happened to her was as bright and raw as it had ever been.

She tore off the dressing gown as if it were burning her skin and pulled on the most shapeless pair of men's pyjamas she could find in her drawer. She buried herself in her bed, drained, numb, exhausted, and fell into a heavy sleep.

The clock read 3:14 when she heard the noise. Startled, she woke up easily, as she did now. There was a knocking, so low she could barely hear it. It could only be one person.

She crossed into the other room, and took a deep breath before opening the door. He passed in front of her without saying a word. When she turned to face him, he was standing in the middle of the floor, drenched, looking lost and alone. His hands were in his pockets, his eyes on the ground.

She wanted to rage at him, to tell him how badly he had hurt her, how she wanted him to go. But instead she lifted her arms and landed two blows on his shoulders with the heel of her hands.

"You stupid, stupid, man!"

She hit at him again. He didn't resist, and reeled backwards a step or two. She turned away from him, covered her face, and let out a ragged sob. He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her middle, but she stepped away and turned to face him.

"Don't! _Don't! _Do you have any idea how important tonight was? Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to even get here?"

He could only look back at her across the wide distance between them. Finally, she crossed and sat on one end of the sofa. After a moment, he joined her, and they sat like fighters in opposing corners, their bodies almost throbbing with pain.

There was a long, empty silence. She cried, but he didn't dismiss her; he didn't tell her it would be all right. Finally, they talked. He bellowed and beat his chest, but in the end, she finally got him to agree to talk to someone, or at least he didn't dismiss the idea altogether.

But then when Monday came round, he was distant, distracted, and she thought she had lost him. It was that Wednesday morning when she came into CID, and he was nowhere to be found. Shaz shrugged when Alex asked where he was and reported that he had called earlier to say he would be on a course all day. "Current Trends in Interrogation Methods."

He came to the flat that evening, nonchalant, with a bottle of wine. He was unshaven and disheveled, but somehow more clear-eyed than she'd seen him in weeks.

"How was your _course?_" she asked him as he breezed past her into the kitchen.

"Fine. Grand. Good."

"Current Trends in Interrogation Methods. Sounds _fascinating."_

"Yeah, yeah. Was." He rummaged in her kitchen drawer for a bottle opener.

"Yes, I think I've heard about that one. Who's the lecturer? Inspector Morse, isn't it?"

"Yeah, Morse. Good man."

He crossed into the living room with the open bottle. She was standing in the middle of the room, arms folded across her chest, eyebrow lifted. He was silent for a moment. He looked away, knowing he'd been found out.

"I love you, Alex," he said quietly. "You know that don't you?"

She had imagined him saying it to her before, but now, actually hearing it, it had caught her off guard, and she could feel the tears spring to her eyes. "I know," she finally managed to say.

"Well, this is the part where you say, 'You're not half bad yourself, Gene,'"

"I love you, Gene. I do."

There was a beat. She could make out a flicker of a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. He passed her a glass.

"Good. That's sorted. I thought you were going to leave me hanging there, Bolls."

He slept there that night. They shared a bed, almost fully clothed, lying next to each other like spoons in a drawer. It was a statement more than anything.

_I'm not going anywhere._

In some ways it was like starting over. They talked. She told him everything that had happened. It was important somehow. He listened without speaking, but she could see the emotion roiling beneath his surface. He talked to her, as much as he was comfortable doing. She knew there were things he would never share, but he wouldn't be Gene otherwise.

They tabled any discussion of sex for the time being. They went out for dinner, they stayed in for take-away and video night, but at the end of the evening it was becoming more difficult to leave it at just a kiss. For both of them.

Her therapist had suggested that their first time together be someplace neutral. Not in the flat that overlooked the alley. It all felt a bit clinical and calculating, but Alex had found a place, one of those old Tudor manors that had been turned into a luxury hotel, complete with a Michelin-starred chef on site, and Gene hadn't complained too much about it. They would make a week-end of it. A new start. It would be perfect.

Everything had started out well enough. They were making good time in the Quattro up the M25 to the M1. Then the skies had opened up and released a massive downpour on top of them. In the blinding rain, they had got off at the wrong junction and ended up on some rutted B road that was barely wide enough for two cars to pass. It was getting dark, they were both out of sorts and still no closer to their destination than they had been an hour earlier.

There was nothing but the flat countryside and miles and miles of plowed-under fields. Up ahead she could see the first landmark in fifteen minutes, the dim lights of a pub set back from the road.

"Pull in there. We can ask for directions."

"I'm _not_ asking for directions!"

"What is it with men and directions? God, what I wouldn't give for my GPS right now," she muttered.

"GPS? What's that?"

"Handheld navigation system. It's…nevermind."

"I've _got_ a handheld navigation system. It's called a bloody _map_."

But he pulled into the graveled car park of the King's Head pub, anyway. The sign was hanging from the pole out front by one hinge and twisted wildly in the wind and rain. They sprinted across the gravel but were both soaked when they stumbled through the front doors.

Inside was as shabby as she had expected, but it was warm, at least. The fake electric fireplace gave off some heat, and she huddled there as Gene conferred with the Landlord over the map he had spread out on the bar.

This wasn't the way she had imagined this week-end going. It was going to be perfect. Instead, they were lost and bickering.

But then she watched him there, dripping water all over the floor. He had done this for _her_, because it mattered to her. He would have been just as happy to spend the week-end at some student hotel in Earl's Court full of Australian backpackers.

And life wasn't perfect. She had learned that very hard lesson. Sometimes things didn't turn out as planned. Sometimes you never get where you want to go. And sometimes you do. It only takes you a little longer.

She watched his face as he nodded grimly and crossed back to her with the map.

"Right." He ran his finger over the map. "We take this road back to the M1 and then two junctions on. Then follow this road to here and then to the hotel."

"That won't get us there until near midnight, will it?"

He shook his head. "Other choice is to turn around and head back to London. We could be there in a couple of hours."

She looked out the window to where the rain was still driving down. "Sod it. Sign says they have rooms upstairs. Why can't we just stay here for the night?"

He sat down, rocking his head from side to side thoughtfully. "I reckon you can always book the room at the hotel for another week-end," he said folding the map.

"Don't think I want to anymore."

He looked at her with a frown, not quite comprehending. "Oh. Well. If you feel that way…" But then she held his eyes, not speaking, and he let out a small smile of understanding. "I'll bring in the bags."

They had dinner downstairs. Not exactly Michelin-starred quality, but it was acceptable and there was plenty of it. They talked in low voices as they sat in the glow of the roaring faux fire, listening to the sound of the rain.

They climbed the stairs silently, and she felt her heart skitter in anticipation. Their room was sparsely furnished, and the _en suite_ that the Landlord had bragged about was a bathroom so small an adult could stand in the centre and touch all four walls. It wasn't perfect. It didn't need to be.

He closed the door behind them and tossed the key on the bedside table. A puff of dust blew up.

"Told you it wasn't much."

She could see in the corner where he had brought up the bags earlier.

"Well," she said, taking a few tentative steps into the room. "_Cozy_." She sat on the edge of the bed, and the springs creaked and sagged under her weight.

"We don't have to stay here, Bolls. We can go. I'll tell the Landlord." He crossed to the door, but she caught his wrist as he passed.

"No, it's all right. I want to stay. Really."

"If you're sure."

He was like some kind of Victorian groom, and she realised then that Gene was as nervous as she was. She gave him a reassuring smile. "I'm sure," she said, and she rose, reaching up with a hand against his face. "I'm sure."

She kissed him lightly on the mouth, and he pressed his hands against her lower back, pulling her in to him. She felt as if she were coming in from the cold after a long while, and desire filled her limbs like warm blood.

"Yes. I want this, Gene. I want you. I want you. It's all right," she whispered in his ear and his mouth covered her face and down her neck.

They moved together toward the bed, and he lowered her there. They knelt side-by-side. She slid his shirt over his head and ran her hands down his broad chest as long, elegant fingers plucked gently at her buttons and tugged at her jeans.

She lay back on the bed, naked now, vulnerable. Shivering, aching for him. He eased himself on top of her, supporting himself on his hands. He stopped for a moment, his eyes on hers, paused at her entrance.

"It's all right…love you, Gene…" she whispered to him again, stroking his rough face. "Love you."

And then she arched her back as he slid inside her, and she said his name in a moan as he moved rhythmically above her. She had forgotten this, the touch of another person. She had forgotten that it could be soft and loving and welcome.

"God, Alex…" His voice came out a ragged whisper as he moved more insistently, his hips against hers, building slowly, gently.

She loved this. The feel of him. The feel of arms around her, his mouth on hers. _This_ was the way it was meant to feel. She closed her eyes, curled her nails into his flesh and bit at her lip as the warm release coursed through her body. "God…yes…"

There was a final thrust, he cried out with her, and collapsed next to her. They lay with limbs entwined, bodies covered with sweat. He pulled her into his arms and against his chest.

She only wanted to lie here, listening to the sound of his heartbeat, the salt-taste of his skin against her lips. No one said anything. He seemed to instinctively know that words would somehow spoil it. Heheld her and stroked her back with his rough fingertips. It was the last thing she remembered before she drifted into sleep.

When she awoke, it was morning, and she could hear the sound of water running. She rolled over and rubbed at her eyes sleepily. Gene was in the bathroom, shaving at the sink wearing nothing but a vest and y-fronts. His hair was rumpled, and he looked every one of his years in the morning.

_God, he really is handsome_, she thought anyway. She loved him completely, and it seemed a miracle that they had managed to arrive at this place together. She wasn't the same. She never would be. But neither was he.

And as she sat there watching him with her knees pulled to her chest, it suddenly occurred to her that for the first time in a long while, the awful thing that had happened to her wasn't the first thing she had thought of in the morning.

She used to think that she would never be whole again. That there would always be a part of her missing. But that wasn't it. She had managed to put herself back together again, it was just that the pieces were slightly different now.

He took another stroke up his cheek and turned to her.

"'Morning," he muttered, his voice still rough with sleep. But she didn't answer. He frowned with concern. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she managed through a watery smile. "Nothing at all."

**THE END**


End file.
